Wooooooooo, it's Halloween (apparently)! What better time to unearth these morbid morsels from the master of the macabre?
Right, like that wouldn't have applied to most of my reading this year. Ranking The Top 69 Edgar Allan Poe Tales only required the minimum of schedule shuffling. And it turns out most of them are lame comedies anyway. No poems, I don't do those.
Skeleton key:
First collected in Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840)
First collected in The Prose Romances of Edgar A. Poe (1843)
First collected in Tales (1845)
Novels
69. Mystification (a.k.a. Von Jung, the Mystic, 1837)
I didn't get this one, but that might just have been because it wasn't worth my effort. Poe's got some kind of beef with snobs. It wasn't worth publishing, except as a way of reaching its presumed real-life target/s. Not worth reading unless you are they.
68. The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq (1844)
We're approaching the abrupt end of Poe's own literary and non-literary life, so it's a bit disappointing to see him fall back on self-absorbed in-jokes again. This account of an insufferable author is one of his most obscure stories for good reason.
67. Why the Little Frenchman Wears his Hand in a Sling (1840)
I've had it up to here with frustrating Irish dialect transcriptions. This comedy about an Irishman and Frenchman's rivalry over a widdy might have been hilarious (unlikely), but I skimmed it in anger. There's not going to be an exam.
66. The Colloquy of Monos and Una (1841)
This was one of the hardest to get through. Not because it's particularly complex or the language is difficult, it's just extremely dull. It's similar to 'The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion,' if you extracted the interesting story at its heart and left only the boring framework.
65. How to Write a Blackwood Article (a.k.a. The Psyche Zenobia, 1838)
I would have preferred if Poe had stuck with the creative non-fiction in-joke all the way through, rather than introducing a paltry plot. It wouldn't have improved it, but then I might not have been required to read it.
It's an unfortunate landmark that his first tale with a female narrator involves said female being ordered to kill herself for our morbid pleasure.
64. A Tale of Jerusalem (1832)
It's odd that many of these classic horror writers start out on the right track with one or two decent stories (one in Poe's case) before going completely off the rails for a while.
Working through the dense Biblical references and faux-archaic language of this "comedy" isn't worth it. On the plus side, it's only a few pages long, so it could have been quantitatively worse.
63. Lionizing—A Tale (1835)
Another piss-poor, unfunny comedy that won't bother the vast majority of Poe readers unless they insist on tracking down the complete works like a masochist.
62. The Power of Words (1845)
A lot of Poe stories come in threes. Unfortunately, it's often the bad ones. This is another dialogue between souls in the afterlife, where they muse on the creation and destruction of the Earth and various other things, because what else is there to do?
61. The Island of the Fay (1841)
Not really a story, more of a spiritual reflection or philosophical essay that posits a tranquil metaphor at the end. Not especially enlightening.
60. Four Beasts in One—The Homo-Cameleopard (a.k.a. Epimanes, 1836)
I hope this trend of faux-archaic satires is on the way out. They're basically interchangeable, this one only stands out for cryptozoological reasons, and all he did is shove some existing animals together. But I will insist on reading them all when they've gone to the trouble of curating collections.
59. Diddling (a.k.a. Raising the Wind; or, Diddling Considered as One of the Exact Sciences, 1843)
The success of this comedy comes down to whether you find the repetition of 'diddling' amusing. It didn't used to mean what you think it means. Poe's essay dispenses what seems to be practical advice about how to scam people, with none of the creativity of 'The Business Man.'
58. The Spectacles (1844)
Another weak, drawn-out comedy about a short-sighted man who refuses to wear his glasses out of vanity, leading to him accidentally marrying a toothless old crone. Guffaws and lols all round.
They turn out to be related too, but that isn't presented as a further unpleasant complication by the cousin-marrying author. Did he not realise where his timeless talent lay, or did these flimsy fables just pay a lot better?
57. Three Sundays in a Week (a.k.a. A Succession of Sundays, 1841)
The only interesting thing in this throwaway comedy is how weird and icky its matchmaking of besotted cousins seems today. A young man begging his own uncle for his daughter's hand is more unsettling than some of his horror stories.
Poe trolls his readers one final time by telling them they can turn lead into gold. This means more tediously technical pseudoscience to make him appear genuine and another boring story.
55. The Balloon-Hoax (1844)
Poe's out to trick us in this mean-spirited (long) newspaper article, which purports to be the true story of the first transatlantic balloon flight.
The fictional journey is described in convincing technical detail, and unlike Hans Phall's earlier balloon trip to the Moon, there are no obvious winks to bring less gullible readers in on the "joke." This also means that nothing interesting happens and it's bloody boring.
54. Mesmeric Revelation (1844)
Profound or tedious, depending on your inclination, Poe endorses quackery again in this conversation between a hypnotist and his patient that allows the author to explore his own (I assume) views on the afterlife, the universe and everything based on his mid-19th century pop science understanding.
Poe was a master of capitalising on trends (when he wasn't starting them), but I'm not fond of his woo-woo tales. I prefer his whoo! whoo! tales.
53. The Duc de L'Omelette (a.k.a. The Duke of l'Omelette, 1832)
It's hard to know how much of this flowery, archaic language is Poe taking the piss in obvious pastiche, and how much of it's just because this is getting on for 200 years old.
It would have been a bit easier to tell if this wasn't one of his earliest stories and I'd had time to get properly acquainted. That wouldn't have made it any more interesting though. At least it features a reasonably picturesque Hell.
A fine example of style over substance. The story is whaffer-thin and confounding, but Poe writes with such dreamlike eloquence. Plus it's set in Venice, which is just cheating.
51. The Landscape Garden (1842) / The Domain of Arnheim (1847)
This is the same story, rewritten and slightly expanded in the later version, and an unusual entry in the bibliography. If you appreciate the art of landscape gardening as much as Mr. Ellison does, and you're in a meditative mood, you'll get a lot more out of these than I did.
50. Bon-Bon (a.k.a The Bargain Lost, 1832)
The last of Poe's first five stories isn't the least, but it's not one for the ages. A philosophical restaurateur gets pissed with the Devil and they discuss how his soul might taste.
It doesn't go any further than that, which is weirdly coy after the unflinching butchery just one story earlier in 'Loss of Breath.'
49. The Journal of Julius Rodman, Being an Account of the First Passage across the Rocky Mountains of North America Ever Achieved by Civilized Man (1840)
Even if Poe had got round to completing this unambitious second novel, it's unlikely that its faux-historical beginning would have given way to increasingly fantastic imaginings like the previous one did. It's no great loss to literature, especially since the exchange would have cost us a fair few short stories.
48. The Mystery of Marie Rogêt—A Sequel to 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue' (1842-43)
Disappointing, forgettable sequels didn't start in the 20th century. Poe dusts off Dupin and his anonymous Watson for another murder mystery that's leagues less fascinating than their first, and even unpleasantly exploitative when you read up on the background and find out Poe was cashing in on the speculation around a true crime.
He doesn't suggest an outlandish explanation this time, it's just a tedious methodical journey to a realistic outcome and longer than it needs to be thanks to strategic serialisation.
47. A Tale of the Ragged Mountains (1844)
I don't have a problem with Poe's paranormal tales when they're spooky, but when they're based around reincarnation recollection and seem to be endorsing mesmeric quackery, I'm less keen.
It all comes down to the quality and the effect. This generic supernatural mystery doesn't even feel like Poe.
46. Some Words with a Mummy (1845)
It's a shame he didn't even try to make this Egyptology satire scary. Instead, it's just a resurrected Egyptian and two blokes sitting around chatting like many other Poe tales. He takes some satisfying swipes at attitudes of his day, but the story's a very loose wrapping.
45. The Angel of the Odd—An Extravaganza (1844)
Things go completely off the rails in this supernatural comedy that puts a sceptic through the wringer in a sequence of unlikely calamities that were doubtless hilarious to readers of the time. That'll teach him not to believe someone's an angel when they say so.
44. The Business Man (a.k.a. Peter Pendulum, 1840)
Poe has a go at scheming businessmen in this daft tale that reads like an autistic blog (I'm one to talk). There's some cunning outside-the-box thinking that might have raised a chuckle back in the day.
43. Mellonta Tauta (1849)
Another of Poe's formative science fiction tales, this is notable for projecting what may be Poe's own social values into his steampunk future, making it a believable and tangible society. Where nothing of interest happens, because this is just the setting for a story rather than a story.
42. The Unparalleled Adventures of One Hans Pfaal (1835)
This seemed like Poe's unashamed attempt to copy a Jules Verne style story. It turns out it was the other way around, with From the Earth to the Moon coming out later and likely with knowledge of Poe's "hoax."
Since it was intended as fake news to fool credulous readers and sell newspapers, the story's restricted from getting too crazy and entertaining, and makes sure it's grounded in pseudoscience. Poe's concept of a plastic bag full of oxygen protecting you from the cold vacuum of space may be completely ridiculous, but he sounds like he knows what he's talking about.
41. A Predicament (a.k.a. The Scythe of Time, 1838)
There are quite a few Poe stories that we'd love to have more of, so it's a shame that his first sequel went to such an undeserving cause.
Continuing the story of the Psyche Zenobia, this is almost as interminable (with bonus racism!) until it perks up at the end, when our doomed narrator calmly describes her decapitation by clock and its aftermath. I just noticed the alternate title – that's funnier than anything in the whole duology.
40. Silence—A Fable (a.k.a. Siope—A Fable, 1838)
Another respectable imitation of mythology, this brief fable is big on atmosphere with its enchanted landscape, apparitions and a laughing demon, but small on substance.
39. The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion (1839)
Poe's multi-genre meddling begins in earnest with a hard science fiction story about a comet interfering with the composition of the atmosphere.
Admittedly, this scientific rationality is balanced out somewhat by being told from the afterlife, but it's not all that dissimilar from some of the apocalyptic tales Arthur C. Clarke would pen over a century later.
38. Untitled (a.k.a. The Light-House, 1849)
Poe's incomplete final work probably would have been a great one. Who doesn't love lighthouses? Sadly, we're no sooner introduced to the lonely lighthouse keeper than it cuts
37. King Pest—A Tale Containing an Allegory (a.k.a. King Pest the First, 1835)
When the drunkards arrive in the lair of King Pest and his cronies, this becomes a dark comedy with grotesquely picturesque descriptions. But it takes its time getting there, and their verbose pomposity gets annoying fast.
Nice hidden-London setting, good ghoulish characters, shame about the story.
36. The Man that Was Used Up—A Tale of the Late Bugaboo and Kickapoo Campaign (1839)
Even in a lesser Poe story, I can see why his brand of horror was so effective. A lot of his stories tap into universal fears of decay and disfigurement, and ones like this suggest a man-made remedy for mortality that's not comforting in any way. It's not a massive leap from here to the Cybermen.
That title got my hopes up for a creepy classic. It's not false advertising, but the tone favours light-hearted comedy over darkness, set in a quaint town where the townsfolk are OCD about time-keeping.
The Devil shows up and causes mild mayhem, but not in a way that's scary or controversial unless you're the sort of person who overreacts to heavy metal album covers.
33. Never Bet the Devil Your Head—A Tale with a Moral (1841)
Poe responds to criticism of his amoral tales by presenting a sarcastic fable that goes typically dark and surprisingly gruesome at the end. The narrator optimistically sending for a homoeopathist in the hope that they can do something for his decapitated mate is probably the high point of Poe's comedies.
32. Morella (1835)
Hot on the heels of 'Berenice' comes another gothic romance about a deteriorating wife who comes off even worse this time, as does her poor daughter (if it even is a daughter). All those female Poe fans are very forgiving.
The difference is, 'Berenice' is a ghoulish tale of man-made horror while this one gets paranormal, and not in an especially fascinating way.
31. The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade (1845)
This is more than a cheap send-up of the Arabian Nights. Poe's 'lost' Eighth Voyage of Sinbad amuses by describing 19th century marvels of engineering to the disbelieving king, who finds it all much less realistic than the fantastical nonsense that came before.
Poe demonstrates Clarke's Third Law over a century before Clarke came up with it.
30. The Imp of the Perverse (1845)
This is a similar tale of overwhelming guilt and random sadism to the more famous 'Tell-Tale Heart' and 'Black Cat,' the main difference being that we focus much more on the psychology and less on the horror.
It also feels more like Poe's putting forward his own theory or excuse rather than offering insights into a deranged mind.
29. The Oblong Box (1844)
Things are kept nice and simple in this maritime mystery: what's in the box? Why does it smell so bad? And why is its owner's wife less attractive than she should reasonably be expected to be?
You'll have a higher chance of working it out if you lived back then, or you live in one of those modern stratified societies that still somehow exist. But it's pretty obvious anyway, unless you're swayed by the nosy narrator's baseless deduction that he stubbornly sticks to all the way to the reveal.
28. The Gold-Bug (1843)
It's extremely disappointing in hindsight to see Poe cut short his streak of horror hits in favour of more accessible adventure tales and rubbish comedies. Maybe he'd run out of those sort of ideas for now, maybe he felt like writing something lighter, or maybe he knew where the money was. The latter possibility is likely, since this trezer-huntin' tale was apparently his most popular work in his lifetime.
It's enjoyable in a simplistic, unrealistic sort of way. All the stuff with the straightforward cipher would have been entertaining when I was ten, if I'd read it instead of 'The Adventure of the Dancing Men,' but the skulls in the trees being nothing more than benign props feels like a missed opportunity to get weird.
27. A Descent into the Maelström (1841)
I should have enjoyed this survival story of weird weather and warped physics more than I did. Poe's descriptions of desolate crags and the foaming vortex are vivid, but somehow unconvincing.
I was also strangely bothered that the storyteller and his rapt audience went to the trouble of climbing that perilous mountain just to provide a scenic setting for an unnecessary framing device.
26. Landor’s Cottage: A Pendant to 'The Domain of Arnheim' (1849)
I wasn't fond of either of the Arnheim stories, but this 'pendant' focuses exclusively on the beauty of nature and quaint architecture, without being bogged down/enhanced (depending on your patience threshold) by philosophical musings.
Poe takes a thousand words apiece (I didn't count) to paint beautiful pictures of the landscape, the cottage exterior and the interior. This is probably the final story he completed in his life, so I'll let him off for being boring, and that makes its tranquil reflections all the more poignant.
25. The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether (1845)
I don't know if Poe expected his readers to be as slow to catch on as his naive asylum "guest," but considering they fall for his hoaxes all the time, it's likely.
This could have been a black comedy classic, if Poe was interested in challenging the status quo or humanising the inmates at all, rather than making cheap jokes at their expense.
24. Metzengerstein: A Tale in Imitation of the German (a.k.a. Metzengerstein, 1832)
"Horror and fatality have been stalking abroad in all ages."
Start as you mean to go on. Poe's first published story may be an admitted imitation of existing gothic tropes before he finds his singular style, but I'd be perfectly happy if they were all like this.
I was already won over by the sadistic young Baron and the two decrepit castles eyeing each other down the bitter generations, but when the tapestry moved, I knew I was going to enjoy this month's reading immensely.
23. Thou Art the Man (1844)
With the closing reveal, this primordial detective story suddenly turns out to have been a black comedy all along. It's one of those mysteries that probably doesn't stand up if you read it again with knowledge of what's going on, but it's entertaining enough the first time.
22. William Wilson (1839)
This isn't up there with the classic doppelgänger stories, mainly because I'm not sure what it's saying. William Wilson, or whatever their names are, lives a life of increasing debauchery and wickedness, while his counterpart devotes his own life to keeping him on the straight and narrow like a cock-blocking conscience, until the point where the original has had enough.
Coming right after the sublime House of Usher, Poe's deliberate avoidance of ornate and imaginative descriptions is more pronounced and disappointing. His protagonists are rarely likeable, but I found it funny how, even when this one's recounting his misdemeanours for the record, he still insists on the pathetic excuse of hereditary naughtiness.
21. Berenice (1835)
This is a deservedly well-known one, even though I didn't enjoy this story very much. That's mainly because I couldn't stand being trapped with the obsessive narrator, whom Poe goes above and beyond to make a repulsive and plain annoying figure. Well done.
This is full-on gothic with its miserable mansion and sickly lovers (them being cousins adds to the creepiness today), but it transforms abruptly into macabre horror when our charmless narrator wakes from an amnesiac spell in an incriminating position. It's a classic ending, but the journey wasn't the most pleasant.
20. Shadow—A Parable (a.k.a. Shadow—A Fable, 1835)
At just three pages, this mood piece might as well have been a poem, but then my prejudice against the form would mean I never got around to reading it.
I'll try not to fall back on 'dark' as an easy adjective in every one of these descriptions, but when a tangible shadow enters a darkened chamber whose occupants are peering into dark glass and under the (less literal) dark cloud of various cosmic and worldly concerns, I'll give myself permission.
19. Loss of Breath (a.k.a. A Decided Loss, 1832)
It didn't take Poe long to find his voice. Ironically, in a story where a chap loses his! Apologies, I'll never do that again.
It doesn't get much more macabre than this tale of an increasingly dismembered living ghoul who's assaulted by everyone he has the misfortune to meet. Modern readers (presumably some at the time too) will be hoping he gets some sort of comeuppance after he starts out verbally abusing his long-suffering wife, but this is taking social justice a bit far.
Just losing his voice would have been punishment enough. I had that recurring nightmare when I was about five.
Just losing his voice would have been punishment enough. I had that recurring nightmare when I was about five.
18. Eleonora (1841)
This is the fourth time Poe's written more or less the same story, already perfected in 'Ligeia.' But they all end up in different places, this one being pointedly anti-Ligeia.
This stomping of well-trodden ground is justified by pleasant pastoral imagery and intrusive autobiographical comparisons. The narrator doesn't mention if his sought-after cousin is thirteen years old (different times), but you can see the thought processes Poe was going through. Less horror story, more creative therapy.
17. The Purloined Letter (1844-45)
C. Auguste Dupin might have become a fully-fledged serialised precusor to Sherlock Holmes if Poe had lived to tell more tales. This third and final case dispenses with death and gore to solve a deceptively simple bit of blackmail.
It's notable for Poe's amateur sleuth getting into the mind of the criminal, using reverse psychology and Columbo-esque bumbling misdirection.
16. The Premature Burial (1844)
Poe returns to a favourite theme and brings it to the forefront in this self-explanatory terror tale.
Its suffocating anxiety will be too much for readers of a nervous disposition, who'll have to skip to the end to find out whether or not the narrator's mortal fear of being buried alive came true, and if he's using up the last of his precious oxygen to tell this cautionary tale to an imaginary audience.
15. The Tell-Tale Heart (1843)
The violent streak continues with one of Poe's most celebrated tales, the confession of a murderer who seems to get the practical details right, but is perhaps less reliable when it comes to the insane embellishments.
I don't know if this is the first story to give us insights into the psyche of a psycho killer, but its emotional, guilt-ridden narrator is in a different league to your American Psychos. It's an enjoyably dark little tale, but I prefer its feline remake 'The Black Cat' in every way.
14. The Sphinx (1846)
If you're short on time, and for some reason Poe's usual 10-page epics seem too daunting, this would make a nice introduction to ease you in. Its winged harbinger of vague doom makes it a sort of 'Masque of the Red Death II,' except the unmasking scene is very different this time.
13. Ligeia (1838)
Following 'Berenice' and 'Morella,' this is another admiring account of a bookish, sickly and subsequently dead beauty. It perfects that particular Poe sub-genre, so he doesn't need to keep riffing on this same idea any more.
It's the best of the three by far, spending more time on vivid descriptions of Ligeia's uncanny beauty and background and the narrator's opium-addled grief, with an ambiguous ending and a poetry break in the middle, so I'm not missing out on that side of Poe completely.
12. The Man of the Crowd (1840)
This voyeuristic classic is a prologue to Poe's pioneering detective stories, even if it doesn't bother with the traditional solving denouement. If you don't enjoy the freestyle, symbolic journey, you'll be incensed by the lack of destination. I'm not sure why you wouldn't enjoy it though.
Who is The Man of the Crowd? What makes him so indefinably striking? Where's he going? What's he doing? These questions and more will float unresolved through your mind hereafter.
11. Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1837)
10. The Pit and the Pendulum (1842-43)
Poe's only completed novel wasn't very well-received at the time, which is probably why we didn't get another. Its episodic structure is a tell-tale sign that it's mainly a bunch of his existing sea stories loosely bound together, like Hodgson and Howard's first novels. Except that those stories didn't exist, and this is all a fresh ocean-of-consciousness. More like Lovecraft's first novel then, except more readable and with more plagiarised travelogues stalling the action.
It starts out feeling like one of Poe's hoaxes, keeping things gritty and believable with mutiny and bad weather. By the half-way point we've moved on to the ghoulish but still human horror of cannibalism and a ship of the dead. Then the realism finally buckles and we're into warped nature, abhuman tribes, the Hollow Earth and glowing giants.
10. The Pit and the Pendulum (1842-43)
Poe's most violent and sadistic streak begins with this unflinching survival story in a prison cell cum torture chamber. The over-the-top machinations of execution, nick-of-time escapes and exaggerated historical background all keep it from feeling realistic, and firmly on the side of macabre entertainment rather than torture porn.
I enjoyed the first twist ending, where our hero escapes the chopping board only to find himself in the fire. I would have preferred it if Poe had ended things on that bleak and hopeless note, rather than delivering a further unrealistic twist for a forced happy ending.
9. The Oval Portrait (a.k.a. Life in Death, 1842)
You could rightly criticise this one for being the ultimate example of Poe's pathetic female characters, as the artist's self-destructively obedient wife just sits there and wastes away in the background rather than causing a fuss. You might also feel a little uncomfortable when it dawns on you that the beautiful maiden you're being persuaded to long for has probably only just hit puberty. But let's get over all that and appreciate a short, spooky classic.
Like many of Poe's best works, this is highly economised and doesn't waste any words, which this time means it only needs to be a few pages long.
8. The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar (a.k.a. The Facts of M. Valdemar's Case, 1845)
Poe felt like messing with the gullible public again, so keeps this testimonial from an experimental hypnotist unadorned and anatomically unflinching. You'd still have to be a moron to believe its story of a body cheating death and death subsequently making up for lost time, but it's nice to swap ornate prose for gritty reality once in a while.
Not that it's lacking in vivid descriptiveness, as it's got one of those endings that will never leave you, no matter how often you plop out the old brain and give it a good scrubbing.
7. MS. Found in a Bottle (1833)
This is a clear precursor to Hodgson and Lovecraft, even if the latter seemingly failed to recognise its humour and would write similar stories of tormented narrators calmly chronicling their misadventures right up to the point of their demise.
It may be a parody of tall tales on tall ships, but while poking fun, it still ends up being a rip-roaring maritime adventure. It'd be entertaining enough if they only had to deal with rotten weather and the foreboding Antarctic freeze (I'm looking forward to the novel), but the whole section with the improbably vast ship and its uncannily aged crew is Weird gold.
6. The Cask of Amontillado (1846)
It's late in the day now, and Poe can't help repeating himself. I've lost track of how many stories have featured characters being bricked up in walls, dead or alive, and most of his horror stories revolve about cold-blooded murder, premeditated or in the spur of the moment.
'Cask' stands out in a couple of ways. Superficially, the Italian setting and carnival masks add exotic appeal. More chillingly, the disappointing happy ending that feels editorially stamped onto many of these stories is shockingly absent. It's almost like all those last-minute escapes were strategically building up to make this rug-pull more affecting, brick by brick.
5. Hop-Frog; Or, The Eight Chained Ourang-Outangs (1849)
Another take on 'The Cask of Amontillado,' which was itself something of a Poe mash-up, I felt less troubled by the elaborately premeditated murders this time, even though they were multiplied by eight.
They did kind of deserve it, and their diminutive, deformed executioner is more likeable. He even gets the girl! Call it positive discrimination.
Calling this the first detective story is probably oversimplifying, inaccurate and unfair to Poe's less famous progenitors, but it's still the one that directly inspired Conan Doyle, and this raw demo is more creative and surprising than most of the Holmes stories. Not to mention a lot gorier – Poe's genre-dabbling doesn't always mean missing out on your favourite staples.
For years I was only familiar with the Iron Maiden version, which opts against revealing a major plot detail, so I could enjoy it unspoiled when I finally read it in some collection or other when travelling. The ending will doubtless annoy if you're an Agatha Christie fan and like to be given a sporting chance. As more of a Jonathan Creek fan, I appreciate its logical, lateral absurdity.
3. The Black Cat (1843)
Poe didn't subscribe to the wisdom that unbroken things don't need to be fixed, and was content to rewrite the same basic stories several times to explore different avenues. 'The Tell-Tale Heart' didn't especially need to be retold with cats, but I'm glad he decided to anyway.
Even as a cat fan, I wasn't sickened by the impulsive violence here like I was by the pointless cruelty of Bram Stoker's lesser feline horror 'The Squaw.' Probably because Poe does such a good job suffocating us in the minds of his narrators, I could almost empathise. We all feel like hanging our beloved pets and axing our wives sometimes, right? No, me neither. I was just kidding.
2. The Masque of the Red Death (a.k.a. The Mask of the Red Death: A Fantasy, 1842)
The finest of Poe's unambiguously supernatural horrors, this is only a shade too dark to have joined the Headless Horseman in America's fairy tale canon.
The basic story of a futile siege against personified death would be classic enough, but it's the embellished details – the masks, the tolling clock – that make it really stick in the mind. The colour-coded chambers are open to endless symbolic speculation (even if Poe might be looking down and laughing), but it's the oppressive black room with the eerie red light that none of the guests dare to enter that hits home for me. Add some steps descending into chilling darkness and you've got a recurring nightmare from my childhood.
1. The Fall of the House of Usher (1839)
Poe's first stony cold classic is one of most perfect things in literature, even if it was apparently ripped off E. T. A. Hoffmann. It's the definitive ambiguous spooky house story, where all the bizarre stuff that happens doesn't necessarily require supernatural intervention to be explained, but Occam's Razor might make an exception this time.
From the cadaverous mansion and its withered occupants at the terminus of the family line to the poetic and fantastic interludes and the weird weather outside, every single thing in this story works in haunting harmony to maintain the foreboding, decrepit atmosphere, all the way to the cataclysmic ending.
